


Shine a Quiet Light

by donutsweeper



Category: The Losers (2010)
Genre: Community: ante_up_losers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mission Fic, Team UFO
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:45:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4591749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All soldiers knew that even tiniest unexpected thing was capable of creating havoc during a mission.</p><p>An earthquake was definitely unexpected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shine a Quiet Light

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the wonderful folks at ante_up_losers for the encouragement.
> 
> The title is a line from "The Colors of My Life" from the musical "Barnum".

"-pher. Eagle to Gopher, come in. Eagle to Gopher. Eagle to Gopher, come in." Jensen's earpiece squawked rudely and loudly with an abrupt crackle and a loud, constant hiss, bringing him back to the land of consciousness.

All he managed to do to reply was to give a heartfelt moan. And that wasn't even anywhere near his (currently missing but hopefully not lost) radio so it wasn't terribly helpful.

"Repeat. Eagle to Gopher. Eagle to Gopher, come in. Gopher do you read?"

Ugh. Did Pooch have to be so loud? And why did he get assigned a cool animal name like Eagle while Jensen was stuck with Gopher anyway? Sure, Pooch was transpo and in charge of the helicopter so therefore in the sky while _he_ was stuck completing his assignment via the tunnels but still, there were other animals that lived and worked underground, right? There had to be. Bunnies lived in warrens underground. Meerkats and other members of the mongoose family created entire colonies to live in underground. Why couldn't he be a meerkat or rabbit? Those have a little panache at least, but no he was stuck with being a _Gopher_.

How long did it take gophers to build their tunnels? According to the research he'd done the complicated system of tunnels and passageways that snaked under the old plantation their drug dealer turned white slaver was using had been built over a period of nearly two hundred years. But that was only because the underground system had kept being useful. He was in the oldest section now, up close to the house, the dirt floor packed down from centuries of use while the section he'd entered had been carefully excavated by modern machines a mere decade ago. It'd be nice to have one of those machines now. He'd always wanted to operate a Caterpillar and it'd be-

"Eagle to Lion. Eagle to Lion, come in." Clay got to be Lion. Pooch was Eagle and Clay was Lion and he was goddamn Gopher. Life really was no fair.

"This is Lion." Ugh. Despite the poor quality of the transmission, Clay's deep voice was like a pickaxe straight to the brain. Huh, a pickaxe. A pickaxe would be nice.

"Lion, Gopher is still unresponsive. I repeat, Gopher is still unresponsive. Please advise." Shit, Pooch, that was tattling. You weren't supposed to tattle.

Jensen patted his pockets and then the ground around him without opening his eyes. Radio. Thanks to the terrain, the bedrock, and the distance between where the team members were during the op they were using a combination of throat mics, earbuds and radios that he'd jury rigged together. Where was that damn radio? He might be flat on his back with no real clue what put him there, but he'd have to be dead and buried before he'd lose his- AHA! radio. 

"Gopher-" he started before stopping to hack up half a lung. Well, that was what he meant to say, what he actually said was more along the lines of "G-arck-phch" before coughing for five minutes straight. When he finally got his breathing under control he opened his eyes. Although considering the fact the tunnels he was in were pitch black that didn't help at all so he started continued feeling around on the ground, this time for his maglite. Which he couldn't find. Fuck.

"Couldn't drop somewhere easy to find, could you?" Jensen muttered and rolled onto his knees with a groan, unable to stop himself from swaying slightly as he continued patting the ground around him.

"Lion, say again?" crackled the radio.

Jensen cleared his throat, turned his head, and spit before toggling the radio on again. He managed to get out a fairly coherent, "Gopher to Eagle. This is Gopher, come in Eagle," before having to cough some more.

"Gopher! Thank fuck. What's your status?"

"Uh." Good question. His ribs felt kind of fucked, but didn't seem painful enough to be broken although he wasn't going to test that theory by playing around with them too much. His head was bleeding and he'd been knocked out, but his thoughts seemed fairly clear and there was no nausea or ringing in his ears so while he was pretty sure he had a concussion, it was probably a mild one.

He ran a quick full assessment- feet and ankles good, right leg fine, left leg damp and aching so probably bleeding but not soaked or throbbing so it wasn't hurt that badly. There were also no painful twinges or uncomfortable areas in his chest or torso that might suggest anything internal had been injured. His palms felt scraped to hell and back but arms seemed fine. Most importantly, he still had the go bag slung over his shoulder and it felt like the damn drive was still inside and intact. "Gopher is mobile but blind. Package is provisionally accounted for. What the fuck happened?"

"Fucking earthquake is what happened," Pooch replied.

Well shit, that explained some things. Like why one minute he was running back through the tunnels for extraction and the next he was flat on his back choking on all the crap in the air. "The team?"

"All accounted for and at the rally point," Clay's voice boomed through, easily understandable despite the static. "We're waiting on you before Eagle arrives for extraction."

"What's the status on Dragon's presents?" While Jensen had been busy sneaking into the compound via the old bootlegging and underground railroad tunnels in order to copy what they needed off the mainframe, Roque had been planting enough explosives to level the place and cover their tracks.

And no, Jensen was not even a little bit jealous that Roque's call sign for this op was Dragon. Not the least bit. (Especially since the name made sense it its own weird way - maybe Roque didn't breathe fire like a dragon but he was the demolition guy whose big booms usually led to fire and had his own little horde of nice, shiny knives he guarded with fierce devotion like a Dragon does gold.)

Jensen could hear a bit of a scuffle, which he assumed was the radio being grabbed out of Clay's hands, and then Roque came on the line. "There's nothing wrong with my fucking presents so get your fucking ass back here before they open up!"

That was Roque for you, such a sweetheart through and through. But, fuck, he was right and that was going to be a problem. Lack of light aside, the system of tunnels was more like a maze that not only twisted and turned back in on itself, but also came to abrupt dead ends randomly either due to swaths of impenetrable bedrock or sections where the shoring had rotted or given way and then collapsed. Jensen only managed to find his way through the first time thanks to the little sketched map he'd been consulting when the earthquake hit and who knew where it had wound up. He'd (mostly) committed it to memory but he had no way of knowing what kind of damage cause by the earthquake and if anything new had collapsed. And if possibly being lost and/or trapped down here wasn't bad enough, there was also the timing issue. Things hadn't been cut down to the wire, but it wasn't like he could wander about, taking his time.

"Aww, I didn't know you cared."

"I don't care about your skinny ass. I care that you owe me twenty bucks!" Roque shouted, lying like a rug. He'd let Jensen borrow his second favorite knife last week and if that didn't show how much Roque cared about him then Jensen didn't know what did.

"How long until-" Oh, hey, his watch! Jensen clicked the button that would illuminate the watch face and grinned when it immediately gave off a soft green glow. It wasn't a lot of light, but it was enough to see his immediate surroundings and to see that - shit - he had a grand total of eleven minutes to navigate his way out of the tunnels before everything blew sky high.

He was well and truly fucked. It had taken a little over fifteen minutes to make his way through the tunnels on the way in and while he'd gotten maybe a little over halfway the distance he needed to go to get out before the earthquake hit unless he could navigate himself out the rest of the way, or at least out of blast radius, Jensen risked getting buried alive. Of course, that was presuming an aftershock didn't kill him before then. Or that none of the tunnels he needed to travel through had already collapsed or been blocked by falling debris. Or that his mucking about in the mainframe hadn't been discovered and he wasn't being followed. Or. Or. Or.

Fuck.

Keeping the watch light on he ran his arm over the ground where he'd fallen but to no avail - no maglite and no map. Okay, this was bad. This was really bad. Like really, really bad. Like Jensen was going to become a permanent part of these stupid tunnels bad. Like if he was lucky the team would find his dead body bad. Like-

The squawk of another radio coming online drew him out of his vicious mental cycle of doom and gloom. "You have your penlight, sí?"

His penlight! Of course! Fuck, he really was an idiot sometimes. He never went anywhere without his penlight, especially if he was going to be doing detail work on a computer since trying to hold a maglite in your teeth while you were up to your elbows in computer guts was pretty fucking difficult. Jensen dug into his side pocket and pulled it out, clicking it on. It was ridiculously weak when compared to the maglite, but infinitely better than the pathetic green glow from his watch. Sweeping it around his immediate area he realized that a support beam had swung down from the ceiling right near where he had been lying, partially collapsing the tunnel in the direction he'd just come through. Either the beam or some of the debris it brought down must have been what had knocked him out earlier. Not seeing the maglite or map anywhere, and not willing to waste time searching through the debris, he started heading away from the compound and to the next intersection.

"You Oscar Mike yet, Gopher? We're-" a burst of static obscured the signal for a moment "-the clock here."

"Roger that, Eagle.” Being on the move would be a damned good idea considering the impending explosion, but getting lost in the maze of tunnels wasn’t going to be remotely helpful. “I'm no longer blind, but my map is gone. I did give you guys a copy, didn’t I? Can you guide me out?"

Pooch's voice crackled along with the static as he asked, "What's your current location?"

That was actually a good question. He pictured what he could remember of the map in his head and went through the route he'd taken so far. "Coming from the plantation I went down the ladder and then out and to the end of that corridor. Turned left at the twisty fork side thing and then continued past the half collapsed part. Went left at the 't' then straight again. Now I'm coming up to a sorta 'v' intersection with one of those creepy bear trap-like manacle things set into the floor. I know I went past two of them on the way in but I don't remember either being at a 'v'."

"...Static on the line, Gopher. Confirm down, left, straight, left….” the transmission faded out for long enough for Jensen to begin to worry, but before he had time to do more than consider attempting to take the radio apart and boosting the signal somehow it flared back to life, "-s then a right and then straight until you're out.”

“Say again, Eagle? I couldn’t read you, please repeat.”

“...-aking up, Goph-....the last transmission?”

“Negative. I did not receive your last transmission,” Jensen replied, enunciating carefully. “Please repeat.”

The radio crackled loudly twice before falling completely silent.

"Eagle? Come in Eagle," he tried again, toggling the radio on and off to no avail. “Well, that’s just great,” Jensen muttered to himself. Looking down at the radio, he dithered for a moment over whether or not he should crack it open and muck about with its guts in order to get a clear signal, but a quick look at his watch nixed that idea in the bud. There wasn't enough time to rewire it _and_ get himself out of the tunnels in time. When it came down to it, he was probably better off getting as far away from the old plantation before it was leveled, even if he got lost in the maze of tunnels, then he was knowing precisely where he was but being closer to the explosions.

Of course, there could be an aftershock any minute and the tunnels could completely collapse and then all his worrying about the where he’d be in relation to the explosives would be for nothing, but there was nothing he could do about that so he may as well focus on the task at hand. Speaking of which. Right or left. Right or left. How to choose….

Fuck it.

Without giving it any more thought other than the fact it sort of felt right Jensen took off, running down the left side of the ‘v’ and then heading down the sort of familiar looking bend that followed. At every turn he tried the radio again to no avail. There were six minutes to go when he came to an abrupt stop at a ‘t’ intersection. There were some mostly disintegrated boards half ground into a low point on the ground that made a sprongy, uneven mess out of the path that Jensen was pretty sure he’d crossed on his way in.

“Okay, okay. How did I go… In, over, follow the main corridor, left, right, bear trap manacle thing, right, right, straight over the boards and YES!” Jensen punched the air. “Cougar and his freaky ninja skills have _nothing_ on me!” Glancing down at his watch, he toggled on the radio as he crossed the boards and headed to the next intersection. “You’re probably not reading me, but I found the path. I think. Probably. Definitely. I definitely found the path. Estimated time to extraction point is - oh, shit.” Jensen had turned left at the intersection after the boards only to find that the tunnel that continued in the direction he needed to go had collapsed. 

He was trapped. 

Shit. 

Panning the light over the debris, Jensen examined it as he considered his options. If he remembered correctly there were at least two other exits to the tunnels but without the map he didn’t stand a chance in hell of finding them and berating himself for not memorizing the thing when he had it wasn’t going to help. Backtracking wouldn’t work either, not with the impending explosions and fallen support beams. That left going forward which meant clearing the path through the tunnel. Without any kind of equipment. Or causing it to come down around him and smother him. In just over 5 minutes. No problem. Ugh.

Unlike the area where he’d been knocked out with its support beam hanging loose and random dirt and crap strewn about the tunnel here was completely blocked, rocks and dirt and boards and who knew what other shit was just everywhere. Panning his light around for a moment didn’t help; there were no crap-free pockets that magically appeared. He could pick a place to try to clear a path randomly, but he had no way of knowing how much of the tunnel remained behind the blockage and there was always the risk of destabilizing the whole thing and making it worse. Not to mention he was hampered by his weakass light and having to hold it in his mouth if he was going to use both his hands to clear a way through everything.

Not like he had a choice though.

Taking in the detritus and where the various bits had fallen, Jensen decided that it was the right side wall that had collapsed in the quake, taking the beams supporting the ceiling along with it. Okay, that meant that while there was still a ton of shit to get through on the left side, it was probably lighter crap and more loosely packed. And less likely to cause more stuff to fall if he removed it. Maybe. 

Shrugging to himself he grabbed a fallen board from the floor and used it as a sort of shovel to scoop dirt and rocks out from against the left wall, working as quickly as he could. He’d managed to scoop out a foot or so of a Jensen-size tunnel within a minute when, without warning, the whole mess shifted, causing more dirt to slide down from the ceiling, obliterating all his work.

“Damn it!” Jensen shouted, the frustration getting the better of him.

There was some sort of muffled sound from the other side of the rubble and then, after a moment, the radio squawked to life. “Gopher?”

“Cougar! Man, this connection sounds good! Cougs, I’m trapped. There’s like three minutes left before the big boom and I can’t get out. The tunnel’s collapsed and it’s all unstable and fall-downy and I don’t have a shovel and even if I did, I don’t have anything to brace a hole with anyway and any kind of hole I’d try to dig to crawl through’d just fall in on itself without it and what’s the point to that? I’m pretty far away from the compound, but who knows what kind of effect the explosion’s going to have on the tunnels. And then there’s aftershocks to consider. I mean, we might get lucky and that earthquake might not have any noticeable ones, but when are we ever lucky? Never, that’s when-” 

“Jensen!” The cry was muffled and faint and… did not come from the radio. 

“Cougs?” Jensen shouted back. “What the hell?”

“Hold position, soldier,” Clay’s voice had a slight doppler effect to it, booming through the radio while also being muted and deadened by the debris. “We’re coming for you.”

“Guys no, you gotta get out of here. It’s too dangerous; we’ve got,” Jensen looked frantically at his watch, “three minutes, forty-eight seconds before the big boom and there’s no way of knowing what’ll do to the tunnels.”

“Giving me orders now, Corporal?”

“Would I do that, Colonel?” 

Jensen chose not to read anything into the lack of a verbal reply, instead listening for the sound of digging. If he could figure out where they were trying to create a path to reach him then he could attack that spot from his side and, with any luck, shorten the time it’d take to get out. There were slight sounds of scraping and shifting coming from… “Are you guys seriously trying to get to me by going through the top of the tunnel?” he yelled into the radio. “How does that even make sense?” 

“Just step away from the affected area, that’s an order. Do _not_ try to help. We should be almost through.”

Man, Clay got grumpy when their ops did not go according to plan. Having just under three thirty to clear the debris, crawl through whatever kind of hole they’d managed to create for him and make a run for the relative safety of the extraction point was, while not the furthest off book they’d gotten, not by a long shot, not by any means what you could consider following the plan. He took two steps back, trying not to twitch, trying to hold himself back from digging through the debris himself, despite the Colonel’s orders. The problem was that not only did Jensen not do nothing well, but he hated, absolutely despised, when his team was in danger, especially if it was because of him. He flicked his flashlight over the watchface. They were seriously running out of time here.

Three minutes. Two fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. 

Shit.

As the sound of scraping and digging grew louder and louder Jensen fidgeted more and more. Two forty-one. Forty. Thirty-nine. How pissed would Clay really be if he starting scooping away dirt from his side? Two twenty-seven. Twenty-six. Twenty-five. Would he even be able to tell? What if only a little dirt was removed? It could make a difference. Two twelve. Eleven. Ten. And it probably wouldn’t (couldn’t) hurt, right? 

Pocketing the radio, Jensen had just stepped closer to the collapsed area when the tip of an entrenching tool poked through. His surge forward halted when Cougar spotted him through the hole he was creating and stopped him with a quiet, “Not yet,” before shoving a weathered board through and supporting it with a piece of a broken beam. It was a matter of moments to clear away the remaining dirt and debris blocking the way, then after gesturing for Jensen to approach, he began to shimmy his way back through the debris.

“Here,” Jensen said, pulling the go bag off his shoulder and shoving it after Cougar. “The others already headed back to the entrance?”

Cougar continued to slither backwards. “Sí, is not far,” he replied as he carefully dragged himself, the bag, the shovel, and his maglite along. 

The bracing didn’t look terribly stable so Jensen stayed where he was, waiting for Cougar to get clear so he could enter. “Then take it and go; I’ll be right behind you. I know the way from here.”

Sliding out the end of the impromptu passageway, Cougar swung his legs out and away from the debris and, with a thud, landed on the floor. After a quick, sloppy salute, he slung the bag over his shoulder before spinning around and taking off down the corridor, the shovel in one hand and his flashlight in his other. 

As carefully as possible, Jensen climbed up to the hole and, avoiding the supports, began shimmying through, pushing the penlight ahead of him so he could see what he was doing. “Feeling more and more like a gopher here,” he grumbled. Reaching the end he realized that slipping out was not going to be as easy as climbing in and, rather than try to slither down the debris pile and risk having it collapse on him, he planted his arms on a semi-stable part and pulled his legs out, tucking into a somersault to get free.

“And the crowd goes wild!” Jensen yelled, making cheering noises as he jumped to his feet. “He’s in the homestretch! Three lefts, a right and he’s out of here!” He paused as he reached back into the tunnel to grab the light. “And now I’m getting as bad as Pooch and talking about myself in the third person. Bad sign, man, bad sign!” 

Moving quickly, Jensen had just made the second left when there was a distant whoosh, a loud whomp and everything began to shake. Jensen had just enough time to think _’oh, shit’_ before he was thrown off his feet, careening into the wall. His world spun and tilted and then he knew no more.

Jensen slowly became aware of a steady rumble and fingers in his hair. The smell of cordite everywhere. Dirt. Dust. His head was killing him, his chest too come to think of it. It was almost a surprise when he realized how raw his throat felt. Pain radiated up and down his leg, making him feel too warm and freezing cold all at the same time. He was lying on something cold, metal. The last thing he remembered was being underground. How’d he get out of the tunnels? He knew he should open his eyes, see where he was, but even with them closed everything was so bright it was painful.

The ground dipped, leaving his stomach behind. Not ground. Helicopter. He was in a helicopter and he wasn’t alone. There were people nearby, he could hear slight murmurs of them talking among themselves but he couldn’t make sense of their words, he couldn’t hear them clearly enough over the motors to recognize their voices. Was it the team? Had he been captured? He needed to move, to get to somewhere safe and he tried to lift himself up and off his warm, comfortable pillow when it shifted underneath him.

“Shhh.” A soft breath on his face. Cougar. Oh. His pillow was Cougar. “Cálmate.” 

“Th’ team?” he asked. It was barely more than a whisper and his voice crackled and croaked but he must have been clear enough because a big, meaty hand came down on the edge of his shoulder.

“We’re here.” Clay. The voice was Clay so the hand was probably Clay too. “We got you, Jensen. Rest.”

Jensen sighed, relieved. The team was okay. He was so tired, but there was something teasing at him, something that was wrong. The package. He didn’t have the package. “P’kage?” 

“Undamaged.” Cougar must have leaned over him because suddenly the painful light was blocked. “We’ll get you patched up when we land. Until then rest.” A hand ran through his hair again. Carefully. Gently. Avoiding the part that throbbed in time with his pulse and stroking across his forehead, taking tension and pain away. “Sleep,” Cougar commanded as his fingers continued to do their magic and this time Jensen followed orders and let himself drift away.


End file.
